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Clouds

OK, so technology is my thing, I love reading about it, and talking about it, and I’m sure there will be many things I’ll put on here about it. But Cloud Technology is a fascinating topic at the moment I think, most people have seen or heard about it whether its word of mouth, at work, or maybe and advert at the train station. The thing is, how many of those people actually know what cloud technology is? Even the proprieters of this new form of computing haven’t defined what it is, and if you ask everyone in that company to write down 10 words to describe cloud computing, most of the words they wrote wouldn’t be the same as each other.

So why is it so hard to understand? Technology is supposed to make our life easier, not more difficult (although I know plenty of elderly who would beg to differ) and cloud technology is all about making it even easier, by turning the software we use into a utility, just like gas and electric. Put simply, that is cloud technology, it is the ability to outsource you computing needs. Although there are lots of variations, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, that’s really what it is.

Outsourcing though causes issues, as I’m sure everyone on the planet knows. Although the famous economists Smith and Ricardo demonstrate that people doing what they are good at means the we can help the world become a better place, a lot of people see outsourcing as a negative thing. People lose jobs, and careers are lost, are often arguments that I receive when talking about cloud computing. But, in reality, this is not true.

So lets say the business you work for now outsources its IT to a company like Google. The IT staff within your company will have less need to do maintenance, but now they can focus on making sure everything that the IT systems are doing is going to help the business develop faster. If a business cuts down on IT staff, those people are not out of work, Google will need IT staff for example. But one of the main things that change, is that careers will move into different areas, instead of needing someone to maintain servers, jobs will be created to ensure a smooth transition to the cloud, and to ensure the cloud technology is working well for them as a company. Consultants are in even mre need as the number of cloud computing providers increase to find out who will serve the customer the best, and how can they make sure it happens? and so, Cloud Specialists are born. Just like when the UK moved from industrial to services, yes jobs will be removed from one organisation, but jobs will be created elsewhere.

The we all progress in our chosen specialisations the more we will benefit! The faster the world will become, we will be able to do more in less time. Is this a good thing? That’s for another time.